In an earlier post for The Open Group Blog on the Top 5 tell-tale signs of SOA evolving to the Cloud, I had outlined the various characteristics of SOA that serve as a foundation for the cloud computing paradigm. Steady growth of service oriented practices and the continued adoption of cloud computing across enterprises has resulted in the need for integrating out to the cloud. When doing so, we must take a look back in time at the evolution of integration solutions starting with point-to-point solutions maturing to integration brokers and enterprise services buses over the years. We should take a lesson from history to ensure that this time around, when integrating to the cloud, we prevent undue proliferation of point-to-point solutions across the extended enterprise.

We must exercise the same due-diligence and governance as is done for services within the enterprise. There is an increased risk of point-to-point solutions proliferating because of consumerization of IT and the ease of availability of such services to individual business units.

Thus, here are 5 steps that need to be taken to ensure a more systemic approach when integrating to cloud-based service providers.

Extend your SOA strategy to the Cloud. Review your current SOA strategy and extend this to accommodate cloud based as-a-service providers.

Extend Governance around Cloud Services. Review your existing IT governance and SOA governance processes to accommodate the introduction and adoption of cloud based as-a-service providers.

Identify Cloud based Integration models. It is not a one-size fits all. Therefore multiple integration models could apply to the cloud-based service provider depending upon the enterprise integration architecture. These integration models include a) point-to-point solutions, b) cloud to on-premise ESB and c) cloud based connectors that adopt a service centric approach to integrate cloud providers to enterprise applications and/or other cloud providers.

Apply right models for right scenarios. Review the scenarios involved and apply the right models to the right scenarios.

Sustain and evolve your services taxonomy. Provide enterprise-wide visibility to the taxonomy of services – both on-premise and those identified for integration with the cloud-based service providers. Continuously evolve these services to integrate to a rationalized set of providers who cater to the integration needs of the enterprise in the cloud.

The biggest challenge enterprises have in driving this systemic adoption of cloud-based services comes from within its business units. Multiple business units may unknowingly avail the same services from the same providers in different ways. Therefore, enterprises must ensure that such point-to-point integrations do not proliferate like they did during the era preceding integration brokers.

HP Distinguished Technologist and Cloud Advisor, E.G.Nadhan has over 25 years of experience in the IT industry across the complete spectrum of selling, delivering and managing enterprise level solutions for HP customers. He is the founding co-chair for The Open Group SOCCI project and is also the founding co-chair for the Open Group Cloud Computing Governance project. Twitter handle @NadhanAtHP.